for a moment at least
by the alphabet soup
Summary: His lips are so close she could easily close the gap between them. In another life she wouldn't have, but she is learned in the art of confidence, so the gap between them closes and for once they are little more than rekindled flames. Unwind crossover


**Disclaimer: **I don't own Lorien Legacies.

**Title:** for a moment at least

**Pairing:** Stanrina

**Summary:** His lips are so close she could easily close the gap between them. In another life she wouldn't have, but she is learned in the art of confidence, so the gap between them closes and for once they are little more than rekindled flames.

So this is a Lorien Legacies/Unwind Dystology crossover. It shouldn't be confusing even if you didn't read _Unwind_. But anyway Juvies are cops which track down AWOL unwinds and the Fatigues are basically adults who help them (in simple terms). "Storking" a baby is leaving them on someone's doorstep.

* * *

The safe house is like the rest: loud, smelly, brief.

The other kids pay her little attention, after all there are more important things to do than converse with the girl with the missing hand. Just because they do not talk doesn't mean they don't stare. She can feel them watching her as she walks past and she can feel the gears turning in their minds as they fabricate stories as to how she lost it.

The only person who stomachs a conversation is a tall, muscular boy who goes by the alias Nine. She doesn't blame him for hating his parents that much. Had she been bio-raised she would have done the same.

"At least there's less of you to go around now." he says with a wink and she rolls her eyes. He's insufferably cocky, but he's the first person to talk to her so he has to be worth something.

"What'd you do to get the order signed?" The topic of how they came to be unwound, Marina has come to understand, is not a touchy subject for most AWOLS. The story is generally the same: parents were fed up with them so they signed the order so they might as well make something decent with themselves. If they were raised in a state home it was because of budget cuts, and if they were a stork that's reason enough.

"Killed a cop." From the way his lips move upward in a smile he's lying in an attempt to impress her. Or just because he can. He finally relents when she raised her eyebrows. "I was storked. They already had a kid." She nods sympathetically and offers him a smile.

"At least you didn't get unwound, right? You're still alive."

"For now. But before I'm unwound I plan on killing as many Juvies as I can." His words don't surprise her. What surprises her is that she doesn't have the desire to do something about the Juvies. She wants to, yes, but nothing can be done by children alone.

* * *

The second safe house is larger than the first. She and Nine stay together only because he feels it's his duty to punch anyone who looks at her funny. Only one person does and by that time everyone had gotten the message. If you so much as look at the quiet girl with one hand you're going to regret it later. She appreciates his help but it makes her feel helpless.

* * *

The third safe house is where she and Nine finally decide now is the time for long conversations about how screwed up the world is. She would be lying if she didn't say it was a relief.

He sits across from her, one hand gesticulating as he speaks and the other propping him up. "He was a strange kid. Had a thing for this girl, Sarah, and smelled perpetually of fire. He was a goody-goody so I doubt his uncle signed the order." The smirk on his face, she decides, is permanent.

"So you miss him." Her words are sincere as a smile graces her face. He shakes his head.

"Nah he was too love-struck to be proper company. I don't miss him."

"It's okay, I know the feeling. I left my sister, Ella, behind at the state home. We weren't related by blood but she was the closest thing I ever had to family." Her voice grows soft and she shakes her head. "I hope she's okay."

"Hope. Not very reliable anymore." he replies as he looks to his left. When she turns her head to see what caught his eye, she sees a black haired girl with olive skin. She beautiful, and he's obviously noticed. "Don't worry, Marina, you're hotter than her." Her cheeks heat up and she tries to hide the smile on her face, but he still notices.

* * *

She and Nine sit across from each other at the tables when they eat, sleep near to each other on the nights when they actually sleep, so are practically inseparable. Her kindness is something that starts to rub off him and his confidence rubs off of her so they're different people than who they used to be before they first meet. It's something that should bother her but it doesn't.

On one particular night when everyone else is asleep and the Fatigues have stopped watching everyone because they have better things to do, they sit close to each other to whisper. They often stay up because sleep has been wired into their brain as weakness, so neither of them are affected by this.

They always sit close enough that they could kiss if they had the reason to, but they never do because such feelings in a world like this are unnecessary. Sometimes Marina catches herself thinking she wouldn't mind but she gets rid of the thought in her head as easily as it appears.

"Your life sounds like shit." Nine admits in a low voice. His long black hair falls in his face as he brushes it away absentmindedly. She wonders how he can keep it at that length, even she had cut her hair eventually. "It must have sucked."

"It did." she admits. The sound of footsteps makes her turn her head to see a girl walking up to them. She sits down next to Marina as if it's completely natural for her to do and the dim candle brightens her face, if only slightly. "Um, hi?" Marina's words form a question and she looks at Nine as if he might have any idea why this girl decided to sit next to her. Apparently he does because his too-familiar smirk forms on his face. "Marina, this is Maren Elizabeth. If you call her Lizzie she'll make sure you don't wake up for a good two weeks."

"Hi, Maren."

"Hi. I see you and Nine are cozy with each other." Marina doesn't know how to respond to that so she doesn't, and neither does Nine so perhaps he's as confused as she is. Maren speaks after the silence becomes awkward, and Marina soon learns that this is a girl who knows how to survive.

* * *

She, Nine, and Maren become something of a trio over the next few days at this particular safe house. Maren is cool and calculated with the social skills of a brick. Marina doesn't know if she intentionally means to be intimidating, but it sure works because now there is another reason why no one actually comes up to them.

Nine and Marina sit next to each other as Maren waits for her share of food in the line. It's week old stew again, but despite how sick of it she is she eat hers down as if she was starving. Now, she rubs her left wrist in an attempt at comfort, but all that the action brings are memories of how she lost her hand in the first place. Nine notices this and tells her to stop, so she does because she always does when someone brings it up.

When Maren rejoins them they sit in silence until she speaks up. "Who'd you kill to be unwound?" she asks Nine, and it startles Marina to think he wouldn't have told her. Then she wonders just how comfortable he is with her.

Nine doesn't give her the amusement of pretending he killed a cop. Instead, his words are truthful. "I'm not a killer, sweetheart. I don't kill people willy nilly like you. I was a storked baby who just happened to get a shitty family." Maren tenses beside Marina and she can already see the storm brewing between them. So she does what she did every other time she witnessed a fight at the state home. She stops it.

"Now is not the time to fight. We're all hungry and scared, and this isn't going to end by you fighting each other because of what you did or didn't do to be unwound." She looks expectantly at Nine first, then her gaze shifts to Maren who nods.

"You're right. Sorry, Marina." Nine mutters something she pretends is agreement and silence falls on the three again that is charged with more tension than it was yesterday.

* * *

She dreams of swimming underwater. Her eyes are open and she can breathe. The water is a reddish color she can only identify to be blood, and she shudders to think of whose blood it could be.

Her answer is given when pain shoots down her left arm, stopping at her wrist, and her eyes close as the sensation of something tearing off her hand repeats itself over and over so that she may never forget it.

* * *

She wakes up immediately, her breath coming in short gasps and her eyes wide and searching everything, everyone because one of them could be working for the Juvies. She isn't safe here, she was never safe here, and every thought in her mind goes back to escape, so that's exactly what she does.

* * *

She makes it to the window, hurriedly prying off the wood when the Fatigues find her and pull her away so she falls to the floor, spraining left ankle.

When Nine asks her what happened the next day, she doesn't answer.

* * *

Maren leaves the group in the fourth safe house because she moves to a different one than Nine and Marina. She catches herself hoping Maren is safe, but realizes that such thoughts are foolish because Maren can take care of herself. She meets no one else interesting at this safe house so she and Nine continue to talk with each other about pointless things because even that is enough to take their mind off the world around them.

It is the second night at this safe house that they move closer to each other because the cold is too unbearable these days and the rags the Fatigues give to them as blankets do nothing to shield them from the brisk temperatures.

"Shit. Why are you good at this?" They play tic tac toe by the light of a candle which smells like roses, and his frustration at her mastery at tic tac toe amuses her to no end. He swears again when she wins for the tenth time and announces that he's finished with it indefinitely. The moment after they stop playing is silent and the sound of the other kids snores is all they hear. His lips are so close she could easily close the gap between them. In another time she wouldn't have, but she is learned in the art of confidence so the gap between them closes and for once they are little more than rekindled flames.

His hands wander only when she lets them, his fingertips brushing against the jacket she wore once for fashion and now for protection. His left hand runs through her brown hair and his lips move away from hers to her jawline, leaving kisses down to her collarbone which she never knew was so sensitive. He pulls her closer, the candle extinguished by his hand and he kisses her lips again when he finds he is addicted to the taste.

Her left arm feels dead, lifeless, between them, so when he pulls his lips away from hers the phrase "You're beautiful," is repeated more times than she can count. She wonders when he had become so different.

* * *

When they appear at the Graveyard, she does not expect planes useless and still functional to be littered across the desert. She doesn't expect any of this, but she adapts because that always what she has been able to do. She and Nine don't see each other much, something she thinks might be better than not. Neither of them have decided to come up with an explanation of what they are, but she figures it's for the best. After all, romance in this kind of world only ends in tragedy one way or another.

* * *

In the moments when she is lost to her own thoughts, she thinks about what would have happened had she been unwound. The short answer is she would be nothing, but the longer she thinks she wonders how her consciousness would fit into the factor. If her entire body is divided, different parts in different people, does she still have a conscious? Or is she nothing because technically she is dead?

She tries not to dwell on these moments but she cannot help how she is gravitated towards them when she is alone. She imagines Nine thinks of it, that they all do at some point in time.

* * *

She and Nine meet accidentally. Or at least that's what they tell themselves. They both know she works in the infirmary jet because of her unnatural knack for knowing how to heal a wound, and they both know she only stops near midnight because being busy helps clear her head. So, no, it isn't an accident.

Nor is it an accident that they end up pressed against each other, their arms hugging each other as tightly as they can and their lips parting only for the breaths they wished they didn't have to take. They might agree this shouldn't move any further, that this shouldn't be called anything lest someone is killed or unwound, but they don't because the comfort they offer each other is something that is too addicting even if they can live without it.

* * *

They lie side by side, their hands clasped and their chests rising and falling almost at the same time. For once the silence that hangs in the air is not unwelcome so Marina's eyes close to block out the world except for the boy whose hand she holds because no one else is willing. She is the one who breaks the silence because she imagines that it is time for him to know.

"When I was fifteen years old, a dog attacked my best friend, Naveen. It bit his face so hard he was bleeding everywhere. I tried to stop it so it bit my hand so hard that they had to remove it. Naveen didn't make it." She pauses to recollect herself and continues. "I didn't want another hand. I knew I could never take it, and there wasn't anything that could be done because they needed my consent. I didn't think the state home would sign the order to have me unwound, but I guess they knew I would have to take an unwind's hand once I entered that situation." She waits for Nine to say something, but instead of speaking he squeezes her hand in reassurance, and she decides that means more than any words he could ever say.


End file.
